The Download: autonomous narco submarines, and virtue signaling chatbots
For decades, handmade narco subs have been some of the cocaine trade's most elusive and productive workhorses, ferrying multi-ton loads of illicit drugs from Colombian estuaries toward markets in North America and, increasingly, the rest of the world. Now off-the-shelf technology--Starlink terminals, plug-and-play nautical autopilots, high-resolution video cameras--may be advancing that cat-and-mouse game into a new phase. Uncrewed subs could move more cocaine over longer distances, and they wouldn't put human smugglers at risk of capture. And law enforcement around the world is just beginning to grapple with what this means for the future. This story is from the next print issue of magazine, which is all about crime. Google DeepMind is calling for the moral behavior of large language models--such as what they do when called on to act as companions, therapists, medical advisors, and so on--to be scrutinized with the same kind of rigor as their ability to code or do math.
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#AAAI2026 social media round up: part 2
The 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence took place in Singapore from 20-27 January, the first time that the event has been held outside of North America. In our first social media round up we had a peak at the first half of the conference which hosted the tutorials, the bridge programme, and the doctoral and undergraduate consortia, as well as the start of the technical programme. Now, we pick some highlights from the second half, which saw a number of invited talks, technical sessions, posters, and the workshops. Do VLMs actually'see' or just rely on priors? He showed how models fail to count stripes on a shoe simply because they recognize the'Adidas' logo and hallucinate the standard 3 stripes.
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Facebook-owner to nearly double AI spending this year
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg plans to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence (AI) projects this year, even as other executives warn of a potential bubble in the industry. During a call with financial analysts on Wednesday to discuss the Facebook-owner's 2025 financial results, the company said it expects to spend up to $135bn (£97bn) this year, mostly on infrastructure related to AI. That is nearly twice the $72bn Meta spent last year on AI projects and infrastructure. In the last three years, the technology giant has spent roughly $140bn in an attempt to get ahead of the AI boom. Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that he is expecting 2026 to be the year that AI dramatically changes the way we work.
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An Instagram data breach reportedly exposed the personal info of 17.5 million users
An Instagram data breach reportedly exposed the personal info of 17.5 million users As spotted by Malwarebytes, the alleged leak includes usernames, email addresses, phone numbers and more. If you received a bunch of password reset requests from Instagram recently, you're not alone. As reported by Malwarebytes, an antivirus software company, there was a data breach revealing the sensitive information of 17.5 million Instagram users. Malwarebytes added that the leak included Instagram usernames, physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and more. The company added that the data is available for sale on the dark web and can be abused by cybercriminals.
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Disinformation Floods Social Media After Nicolás Maduro's Capture
From seemingly AI-generated videos to repurposed old footage, TikTok, Instagram, and X did little to stop the onslaught of misleading posts in the wake of the US invasion of Venezuela. A crowd outside of Miami reacts to the news of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026. Within minutes of Donald Trump announcing in the early hours of Saturday morning that US troops had captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, disinformation about the operation flooded social media. Some people shared old videos across social platforms, falsely claiming that they showed the attacks on the Venezuelan capital Caracas. On TikTok, Instagram, and X, people shared AI-generated images and videos that claimed to show US Drug Enforcement Administration agents and various law enforcement personnel arresting Maduro.
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Distilling Meta Knowledge on Heterogeneous Graph for Illicit Drug Trafficker Detection on Social Media
The activities of online drug trafficking are nimble and resilient, which call for novel techniques to effectively detect, disrupt, and dismantle illicit drug trades. In this paper, we propose a holistic framework named MetaHG to automatically detect illicit drug traffickers on social media (i.e., Instagram), by tackling the following two new challenges: (1) different from existing works which merely focus on analyzing post content, MetaHG is capable of jointly modeling multi-modal content and relational structured information on social media for illicit drug trafficker detection; (2) in addition, through the proposed meta-learning technique, MetaHG addresses the issue of requiring sufficient data for model training. More specifically, in our proposed MetaHG, we first build a heterogeneous graph (HG) to comprehensively characterize the complex ecosystem of drug trafficking on social media. Then, we employ a relation-based graph convolutional neural network to learn node (i.e., user) representations over the built HG, in which we introduce graph structure refinement to compensate the sparse connection among entities in the HG for more robust node representation learning. Afterwards, we propose a meta-learning algorithm for model optimization. A self-supervised module and a knowledge distillation module are further designed to exploit unlabeled data for improving the model. Extensive experiments based on the real-world data collected from Instagram demonstrate that the proposed MetaHG outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Smug because you love your job? Idealising your career can backfire - leading to burnout and guilt, experts warn
Devastating truth about Rob Reiner's daughter Romy: Her own addiction battle... how she'lived in fear' of Nick... and the handsome companion she's leaning on, all revealed by heartbroken friends Baby-faced accused killers will be tried as adults after 14-year-old girl's horrific murder Trans killer, 30, who executed her parents then converted to Islam is jailed for 25 years after trying to skip'stressful' sentencing I'm Miley Cyrus's REAL mother: Woman at center of bombshell'adoption' lawsuit breaks silence about'pregnancy at age 12' and makes MORE wild claims School bus driver responds to backlash after she was fired over'English-only' sign Six common medications you should NEVER mix with alcohol: Doctors reveal how that'pre-emptive' painkiller could destroy your liver... and the most deadly combination of all Next domino falls in Michigan's Sherrone Moore scandal as top assistant defects to SEC school The extravagant gifts the rich are buying this Christmas including an'extra person' in their marriage I was forced into Witness Protection at age seven... here's how the program nearly ruined my life Former Nickelodeon star is now'homeless on the streets of Los Angeles' How Tom Brady REALLY feels about Gisele Bundchen's secret wedding to jiu-jitsu instructor... as insiders whisper about potential of his OWN second marriage The hidden blueprint to keep MAGA in power for 100 years as Trump's inner circle shows signs of cracking Kimberly Guilfoyle's'yelling fit' after ex Donald Trump Jr's new engagement... as insiders reveal her nasty texts and derogatory nickname for Bettina Anderson Smug because you love your job? READ MORE: Scientists reveal surprising secret behind Bill Gates' success The saying goes, if you find a job you love you'll never work a day in your life. But an expert has now warned that this can backfire - and the seemingly innocent idea of loving your work can take on a moral edge. Mijeong Kwon, assistant professor of management at Rice University in Texas, said the dream of enjoying your career has become compulsive for many. 'Working for money, prestige or family obligation starts to look less admirable, even suspect,' she wrote on The Conversation .
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